Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Perd Hapley on January 02, 2024, 07:31:48 PM
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I've never had a refillable cigarette lighter before, but I bought a customized one as a gift. I want to fill it before I give it to them, but I've tried a grocery store, Bass Pro, Cabela's, and a nearby gas station convenience store. Bupkis.
What gives?
Someone offered to help pay off our church's mortgage, by matching whatever we could raise. We raised $69,000, and paid it off, so we'll be burning the mortgage this Sunday. Hence the lighter.
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Zippo lighter fluid on Amazon.
Ronson and Zippo at Walmart.
So sez the interwebz.
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Have a can of camp fuel laying around? Same stuff.
Brad
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Most big grocery stores around here that carry cigarettes have little yellow bottles of it. Usually with the butane lighters and tobacco products.
Congratulations on paying off the church mortgage.
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I asked a smoker just now, and he said hardware store. Which makes me feel dumb.
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It might depend on where you live with Walmart. An Oregon one is closest to me and they don't sell it. Idaho has a regional chain of tobacco stores, seemingly on every other block. If Misery has something similar, you'll find it there.
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Congratulations on paying off the church mortgage.
Wish I could take credit for it, but thanks.
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Butane or Zippo type?
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You can buy from your neighborhood tobacconist
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You can buy from your neighborhood tobacconist
I will not buy this record, it is scratched.
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I thought you could always buy them wherever you can buy cigarettes.
The Zippo brand is better because it comes in a metal can and lasts for decades. The Ronsonol stuff is the same but it comes in a plastic bottle and goes bad fast.
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The zippo stuff works great for flushing out triggers and such... And it leaves a thin protective film.
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Butane or Zippo type?
Zippo Marx
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Around these parts you almost have to go to a dispensary.
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I purchased lighter fluid and flint strikers at a Walgreens
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Walmart and most grocery and tobacco stores sell it in my neck of the woods.
Camping stores will also sell it for use in catalytic hand warmers.
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I asked a smoker just now, and he said hardware store. Which makes me feel dumb.
Go with the feeling.
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I asked a smoker just now, and he said hardware store. Which makes me feel dumb.
There's a thread for that.
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Zippo Marx
So.I googled that since I wasn't familiar, that model didn't come up, but I learned that Zippo makes both the old Zippo wick lighters and butane lighters now.
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Walmart and most grocery and tobacco stores sell it in my neck of the woods.
Camping stores will also sell it for use in catalytic hand warmers.
Bet your area hasn't had a riot/looting problem.
It wouldn't shock me if lighter fluid is not sold in places like Walmart and grocery stores in certain areas because of shall we say certain potential issues with it being in those stores.
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So.I googled that since I wasn't familiar, that model didn't come up, but I learned that Zippo makes both the old Zippo wick lighters and butane lighters now.
I'm pretty sure that he was making a funny, inferring that Zippo was one of the comedy troupe of the Marx Brothers -- Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo.
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In addition to camp fuel, VM&P Naptha will also work. Same liquid in all three. "Lighter Fluid" is just naptha in a prettier and more expensive bottle.
Brad
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I'm pretty sure that he was making a funny, inferring that Zippo was one of the comedy troupe of the Marx Brothers -- Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo.
Since he's a white guy self identifying as a black guy, he probably wouldn't like a Marx Zippo.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1277052010/rare-1930s-marx-zippo-monkeypull-string
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Since he's a white guy self identifying as a black guy, he probably wouldn't like a Marx Zippo.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1277052010/rare-1930s-marx-zippo-monkeypull-string
Looks fantastic. As it is the 10th day of Christmas, I am still accepting gifts.
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Looks fantastic. As it is the 10th day of Christmas, I am still accepting gifts.
Orthodox Christmas is coming up. :D (I think it's Monday)
I have an old Zippo lighter and I can't find flints for it locally. I haven't tried a smoke shop yet; in years past I always bought them at or near the cigarette counter at any supermarket. So I'll probably buy a bulk pack of them from Amazon and have a lifetime supply, especially since I don't smoke so I don't use a lighter very often.
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I looked on Amazon and saw fuel+flint kits for sale for Zippo lighters. I have no idea if they fit all models.
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I don't understand. Here, northwest of Denver proper, there are three tobacco shops I can think of offhand: 44th Avenue, Youngfield, and Colfax. The latter one also sells edged weapons. I think there's another one on Wadsworth and 39th.
The beauties of using actual lighter fluid containers instead of dumping it out of a can of paint thinner are (A) the safety against spillage (precision of application) and (B) you can safel carry one in a backpack while camping to start a fires in a drenching rain. (My Scoutmaster taught us that.)
Seems to me we had a thread on this a year or so ago.... ? May have been on a different board. I remember discussing Zippos bearing logos of companies and military units and the like.
Terry, 230RN
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Walmart here sells the fuel (I don't remember whether it's Zippo brand or Ronson) in a yellow plastic bottle for about $2.50. The flints are just hard to find for some reason.
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I've got a Scripto Electra XL which is flintless. Works like the spark generator on a BBQ lighter...
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/KSQAAOSw68Zet000/s-l500.jpg)
Trouble is, I can't see any way to refill it with butane/lpg.
i got it long before I quit smoking in 2017, stopped using it because of the refillability issue. Seems to be a minor collector's item nowadays. Mine still works.
Terry, 230RN
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I don't think the Electras were refillable. They were a higher-end lighter, but still considered to be a disposable.
They were also very popular as cobranded lighters.
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It's kinda strange for them to introduce a product with a more complicated spark mechanism than the flint method, and not include refillability.
I've had refillable flint lighters, a BB gun which used refillable lpg as a propellant, and a miniature torch which was also refillable. I mean, it's not like the valving to make them refillable was a highly complicated system. Was Scripto just being stupid? Or were they counting on multiple sales because of its uniqueness when yours ran out of lpg ?
Yeah, piezoelectric ignition was cool at the time, which appealed to me, but I wasn't about to buy another one when mine ran out so I stopped using it.
Terry, 230RN
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"It's kinda strange for them to introduce a product with a more complicated spark mechanism than the flint method, and not include refillability."
It might be more complicated, but overall I bet it was actually cheaper to manufacture. You didn't need the striker wheel, you didn't need the parts to hold the flints, etc. The entire mechanism is smaller and more compact and uses far less materials, especially expensive metal materials like the striker wheel assembly. That's apparently where virtually all of the cost is in a flint lighter.
So yeah, I can see them introducing a non-refillable pizo lighter, especially given that most of them, as I said, appear to have been produce as co-branded give aways.
Marlboro apparently give away several million of them as incentives and rewards. Other companies did the same.
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K Frame Reply #31 on: Today at 07:41:08 AM ยป
"It's kinda strange for them to introduce a product with a more complicated spark mechanism than the flint method, and not include refillability."
It might be more complicated, but overall I bet it was actually cheaper to manufacture. You didn't need the striker wheel, you didn't need the parts to hold the flints, etc. The entire mechanism is smaller and more compact and uses far less materials, especially expensive metal materials like the striker wheel assembly. That's apparently where virtually all of the cost is in a flint lighter.
I disagree with that --sometimes I think you say things just because you like to argue.
:rofl:
But maybe it's a judgement call. The only "special" parts in flint ignition is probably the striker wheel and the cerium flint itself, both of which had been around for a looooong time and were in steady mass production by somebody.
It's kind of a coin-flipper, considering the times. My opinion is flint was at the time, simpler than piezo ignition. But nowadays you can't swing a cat without hitting some kind of impact high-voltage device --like BBQ lighters.
Terry, 230RN
PS. My spell checker is trying to correct piezo to "pie." Had to add "piezo" and "piezoelectric" to my Dictionary. It's nothing new, piezoelectric devices have been in use for many many decades... the old record player transducers in the playing arms were piezo devices, and if you look at your wrist watch, the crystal oscillator time base is a piezoeletric device, usually 32768 kHz. Which can be broken down to 1 cycle per second (1 Hz) by dividing by 2 fifteen times, for timekeeping.
(Edited to correct cesium to cerium
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"I disagree with that --sometimes I think you say things just because you like to argue. "
Of course I like to argue. Why else would I be here?
But note that I said I BET that the overall cost of the mechanism (and of the lighter) was less. I have no firm numbers to back that up.
But, it begs the question, if the piezoelectric ignition system was no less expensive, no less complex, no less reliable, etc.... then why put it into production at all?
In fact, why make lighters at all when matches are supremely cheap and fully matured technology?
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^
"But, it begs the question, if the piezoelectric ignition system was no less expensive, no less complex, no less reliable, etc.... then why put it into production at all?"
Because of the "latest and greatest 'zing'" factor. Note the name, "Scripto Electra XL." Given the times, what could be zingier than that? It was the "high tech" aspect of it which made me buy one. (Could have been simply a test marketing effort, too, who knows... who guesses?)
Terry, 230RN
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG96W27OkSY
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^ :rofl:
She should be doing the blowing.
Who said that?
Not me.
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Oh my god, I remember that ad!
But, it certainly didn't tout the newest, latest, ignition system...
If anything, it was touting its ability to fend off date rape...
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^ :rofl:
She should be doing the blowing.
Who said that?
Not me.
Nowadays he could be a she
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K Frame: "But, it certainly didn't tout the newest, latest, ignition system..."
I think it certainly did, but there's no point in horse-beating any more. You win. <eyeroll>
(https://schulzmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/BillMauldinJeepShot-598x705.jpg)
:rofl: